The quality of our minds determines the quality of our lives

And this has been my recurring message for the day.
Once and again, learn to master your mind, the root of all problems. The mind has the power to create hell in the middle of paradise, or paradise in the middle of hell… Our mind is creating our world constantly.

The slight “problem” is that very few of us really know how to be masters of our own minds… One negative thought, mostly a self criticism one, leads to an avalanche of negative thoughts that end up drainig us from our own power, taking away our happiness, our self confidence and our peace. As I heard this morning,  “The untrained mind is the source of all pain, frustration, resentment and anxiety”.

How then, do we start training the untrained mind? MINDFULNESS, and this word means, checking all the time what’s going on up there. Learning to observe our mind, as scary as that can be in the beginig, learn, with patience and determination to be present, listening to our thoughts, and, with time start replacing those poisonous thoughts to loving, uplifting thoughts.

And this is precisely why meditation is very important, it is the most powerful tool to become the true masters of our minds. To regain our true power and to finally be able to decide how we want to feel. To stop being victims of our reactions, and having a much better chance of long lasting peace and happiness…

The butterfly needs the stuggle to fly

There was a man walking by, and he suddenly saw a cocoon, he could see, that the poor butterfly was struggling very badly to try to get out, it was fighting, it really looked as it it was having a very bad time. So that man decided, as an act of good will, to release the poor butterfly from that asphyxiating cocoon…

And there it was, the soon to be butterfly, with a swollen body, trying to open her wings. Unfortunately, after much effort, her body was still swollen and her wings could not open for her to be able to fly…

She had left the cocoon too soon. The butterfly needed the struggle to gain enough strength, so that when the time was right, with all that strength and intent, she would be able to open her wings and fly.

That act of “good will” had actually stranded that butterfly forever…
How many times does this happen to us? We want to help people, we want to “force” them out of their misery/struggle/cocoon, when they are still not ready to leave it? when the lessons to be gained from that struggle have not yet transformed into the strength that the person needs to be able to fly into new horizons?

And how many times, whithin our own process, we try to skip the “struggling out of the cocoon” phase? hating that feeling, hating that struggle, trying to avoid it?

If we really see our struggles in life like that cocoon that will give us the strength to fly high, having faith than when the time is right, not in your own time or anybody Else’s time, you will be strong enough to brake it and transform into an even more radiant human being…

Perfect timing, trust, love the process… FLY!

I love this story, thank you to the Brhama Kumaris Raja Yoga teachings for sharing your knowledge to us…

Love without attachment...

I know, this sounds practically imposible, right? I think the mere idea is inconcibable for most of us… but if you really come to think about it… most of our relationships are really based on attachment, on a never ending list of expectations, conscious or unconscious.

We meet someone, and we start by exagerating the attractiveness, we idealize the person, as if it were a God/godess that had the power to provide us our every need, we “love” everything about them, but we really fall in love with the idea of a person right away… all of these dreams and projections we have from the first time we see them “Oh yes! This is exaclty what I was looking for…” We think this person will give us everything we want… (notice the I WANT factor, we are never very worried in this first encounters about us being able to provide all the “needs” the other person has). At the same time, the other person will make his idealization, his dreams, to see if he/she can proyect all his/her needs into this new person… if he/she thinks this new person can, the realtionship will move forward…
But, by now, I think you are able to see what is happening, we have two people that have fallen in love with the “idea” of eachother… And this can only lead to DECEPTION… after a few months, when they start realising, this person is not living up to your expectations, problems start coming up, we discover who the person really is, and there is really nothing we can do about it, we discover that person is also expecting you to fullfill this emptiness, this dream, this neverending fantasy, the fantasy that somebody will one day come and make you happy, your other half, and then everything will be perfect. Fantasy, expectation, selfishness that will lead to deception, over and over again…
I dont know how this works. We were all raised to believe we would find “The One”, and until then, we should reserve our love… And for some reason, we end up finding so many partners in our life, and after we have given “everything” to them, we end up crying, feeling like a victim, asking the same question over and over again….

We love unconditionally when we dont intend to posses...

Why did he/she doesn’t appreciate everything I gave? I gave everything I had for him/her and he threw it over board… And now I feel I gave everything and I don’t have any more to give… we end up so hurt, and resentful… men hate women, women hate men… but we can’t live whithout eachother right?
Was it love? Was it attachment? What is love? What is attachment?
I was in a buddhist talk the other day and they described it very nicely, when its love, you feel at ease, peaceful, patient, happy, light… there is no such thing as fear when love is in the air… attachmemnt? you can quickly notice it when you start feeling anxious, jealous, you try to start controling…
And as they say, the root of all of our problems, specially our relationships, is that we think that our happiness is more important than everybody elses’ happiness… but try this, at least once, start thinking that everybody’s happiness is JUST as important as yours, start thinking that your partner’s happiness is just as important as yours, and you will see how this neverending demands from you smoothly easen up…
Their happiness and their freedom is just as important as yours. Go back to this thought over and over again…
We unconsciously want people to behave the way we want them to behave, WHY? because we are thinking of OUR happiness, of OUR freedom, of OUR  wellbeing, and when people don’t behave how we would have expected them to behave towards us or a certain situation, we become angry, deceptions arise, we start planting little seeds of resentment that later on will grow into bitterness, anger or depression…
This is only one way of putting it, but for sure it can lead to a more peaceful and integrated experience of love in our lives…
Try the experiment this week, hold strong to the thought in your mind and in your heart:
“EVERYBODY’S HAPPINESS IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS MINE”
“HIS/HER HAPPINESS AND FREEDOM ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS MINE”
This is the fisrt step of learning to love without attachment, when we master it, no more room for a broken heart, when we raelly understand it is not always about us, our heart will be able to beat faster, no fear of loving or letting go….